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It’s a joy to wake up in the morning full of expectancy and eager anticipation of good things happening all day. Christian Science makes feeling good in control a normal way of life.
So, when the following quote came through my email this morning, it caught my attention, and was simply too good not to share.
Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says “Oh no, she's awake!”
A week ago, the Fichus tree in my office was shedding leaves by the hundreds every day. It’s a little tree, about 5 feet high, and I started to worry that it was dying. “There weren’t going to be any leaves left,” I feared.
When I arrived at the office in the morning, leaves were on the floor to be swept up. I’d shake the limbs to separate any loose foliage so I wasn’t picking up a parade of dropping leaflets all day long. One day, when the refuse was especially large, I noticed a third of the remaining leaves were yellow and ready to depart soon.
Why was my tree a goner? I wondered.
Then one afternoon, as I sat at my desk and stared at my sad looking tree, I noticed that there were a lot of leaves still on the branches. Maybe too many, I exclaimed. Could it be that the tree was shedding excess leaves from heavy summer growth, and preparing for a fresh new year? I pondered.
The next day, after several hundred more leaves fell, I noticed there were still a lot leaves on the tree. The plant appeared better balanced without the extra foliage. I decided that maybe the shedding was a yearly ritual to bring the upper structure into line with the supporting root system.
After hundreds more leaves fell, and still the limbs looked adequately clothed, I finally decided that the tree was in fine health, was not dying at all, and I had nothing to be concerned about. Today, the tree looks beautiful, fit, and healthy. See below picture!
I saw an analogy between the falling leaves and the failing economy many fear today.
Terrified investors and worried business people are seeing signs of financial death all over the world. The media reports economical symptoms of demise everyday with increased layoffs, unpaid debt, shortage of credit, failing banks and more. Like my falling leaves, if one watches only the failures, pretty soon, they might conclude that all is hopeless and lost, just like I thought my tree was lost.
But this need not be.
Just as my tree was not dying, the economy is not dying. It is rejuvenating, preparing for tomorrow, getting healthier and stronger for a better future.
The same law of balance that adjusted the foliage on my tree is adjusting our economy, eliminating what led to suffering and making way for the new and improved.
In the divine economy, supply and demand are in perfect balance, always. Human consciousness has yet to realize this truth and fully understand it, so, in its efforts to conduct business, it sometimes gets out of balance and takes on extreme forms like we’ve witnessed in our world economy over the last couple of decades.
But no matter what extreme the human is pushed to, God’s law of balance is constantly at work requiring conformity. The Christ is ever-present in human consciousness bringing extremes back into line with what more nearly represents the divine economy. The law of balance wipes out the extremes, and restores order.
Motives and desires have gotten out of whack with divine expectations in some corners of our economic structure. Too much greed, dishonesty, lust and impatience have governed decision-making, and caused distortions that led to gross loss and suffering. God’s law will not allow it to continue. Truth requires error to be seen and rectified.
While the “leaves are falling,” out of the economy, it’s important that we not get overwhelmed with dismay and discouragement. We have to step back from the carnage, and look for the good that remains, and be grateful for it. It is abundant! We can protect ourselves from the fallout by living God’s law of balance faithfully, and not letting our decision-making be influenced by any of the extremes that are undergoing correction.
The underlying structure of our economy is immortal. It is spiritual, governed and controlled by the divine Mind. It will prevail and prosper.
As we all acknowledge the one Mind in control, and live in harmony with it, the divine economy will become more evident in everyday human transactions, and the extremes will be eliminated. Balance will prevail, and harmony restored.
These are not times to sit by and observe. We need to jump in with prayer and help all people overwhelmed by fear, be freed of their fears.
My Fichus tree was going to live whether I prayed or not. The law of balance was at work ensuring its survival. But I did need to pray to figure that out for myself.
The same rule applies to the economy. It is going to survive and be fine, but prayer is needed to help ourselves and our neighbor see all is well, so we can make sound decisions accordingly.
If I hadn’t prayed about my tree, I might have cut it down prematurely, and that wouldn’t have been wise! I needed to pray to keep myself from injuring the plant and making things worse.
My, oh my, what lessons can be learned from a Fichus…
My Fichus tree today!
It’s an absolutely crucial question to ask when praying for healing. What do you expect to happen?
Do you expect the body to get better? Honestly now, don’t just mouth the words, “Yes, I expect the body to get better.” Do you honestly believe and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the truth you are praying is going to heal you mentally and physically?
We’re always expecting a certain type of result. When struggling with a physical illness, we need to know whether we’re expecting to get better or expecting to get worse. Typically, one choice or the other has been made whether we’re aware of it or not.
Too often, I’ve noticed, patients expect to get worse. Doctors have told them the illness is incurable or will go through stages, and the patient believes the doctor, agonizes over his opinion and fears the consequences, and then lives them out. Even though they believe prayer heals, their faith in the doctor’s verdict is stronger than their faith in God. Their expectation is formed more by the doctor’s opinion than by the spiritual truth. And this mesmeric hold has to be broken to improve one’s expectations and move the weight of thought onto the side of the healing Truth.
We have to be on vigilant guard to defend our expectations from evil influence. Mortal mind wants us to believe in error, to accept suffering as natural and normal, and to give into increased distress. That’s the whole agenda of mortal mind, to perpetuate and increase suffering. But Christian Science comes to the rescue and declares, “You don’t have to suffer. There is a spiritual healing to be had. Disease is not the reality it appears to be. Health is the reality and is yours to demonstrate today. Christ is at work on your behalf making it so.”
When my eye was hit severely by a tennis ball last year and the evidence of damage in my eyeball was highly distressing, I included in my prayer an expectation of physically getting better. I knew there could not be a disconnect between what I was knowing spiritually, and what I was experiencing humanly. If it was spiritually true that my vision was indestructible and that God gave me a seeing eye, then I could not have destroyed vision or an unseeing eye, in the spiritual or in the so-called physical. This meant that the physical evidence of a damaged eye had to disappear. And it did.
Mary Baker Eddy said it well,
"Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them."
So, back to my original question, “What do you expect to happen as a result of your prayers?”
It’s not enough to outline what we expect to happen in order to be healed, but it is a strong indicator of how much faith we have in the Truth we’re praying to demonstrate. The more we believe the truth and understand it, the less faith we have in error, and the stronger our expectations become of making progress morally, mentally, spiritually and physically.
When Jesus commanded, “Rise, and walk.” The man arose and walked. Jesus expected physical recovery as a result of his spiritual treatment, and physical recovery came.
We can have the same type of expectation, and results! God helps make it so...
Life is largely a matter of expectation.
~ Horace
“He that expects nothing shall not be disappointed, but he that expects much—if he lives and uses that in hand day by day—shall be full to running over.”
~ Edgar Cayce
“I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
~ Samuel Johnson
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My Fichus tree today!